Another day, another priorities headache here at the U.N. headquarters of the New World Order. On May 25, the powers that be favored the "status quo" when Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali bumped Tiananmen Square hero Shen Tong off the premises at the request of the Chinese government.

The next day a different dissident group tried its hand at crossing the U.N. moat. From an outpost in the Beekman Towers Hotel across the street, Iraq's exile resistance put forward its bid for world attention: a plan for a Nuremberg-type tribunal to try Baath leaders as war criminals.

If ever a resistance group deserved backing, it's the Iraqi exiles - they're rule-of-law democrats who last year wrote their own U.S.-style Bill of Rights. With global opinion unified against the Baath regime, you'd think the world would be embracing them.

© Copyright 1993 Wall Street Journal